Okay so 4.3 is around the corner and in a logical choice my guild has asked me to reroll to protection as having 1 warrior and 1 paladin tanking is better than having 2 warriors. So over the last 3 weeks I have been playing prot on the ptr and this reset tanked 6/7 hc, having tanked Rag hc the previous reset.

While the actual tanking is under control i've been spending my time researching gear options, consumables, tactics to make sure i'm ready to perform at the highest level for the new content.

My problem is a lack of practice with the theory of prot and i'm hoping that I can get some help here. I'll post my armory for convenience

What im wondering is, is there a best option to follow when preparing my gear? I'm talking about things like to go Mastery elixirs and use a health trinket or just go double mastery (obviously some fights using the TB trinket is godly and i can just grab a flask if i use it). Is there an overall majority leaning to certain gear set ups? Like Rag shoulders as the off set piece, no 4 set etc.

What food buff should I use if I run double mastery trinks and don't need the mastery food, or just regem to make it useful?

I know my gear isn't perfect but hopefully the loot gods will finally bless me with another glove token and my damn shannox belt before 4.3 hits. Is there a theoretical BiS for prot like for Ret (in a general sense, obviously like i said above swapping trinkets for resist or something like that excluded)

While I don't think I'll be flamed here as the community seems amazing I do want to point out that up until now prot has been nothing more than a way to avoid ques for dungeons to me so I'm highly behind on the more finesse areas, having spent all of 4.2 learning how to be amazing at ret, prot wasn't something to worry about at the time.

Also as a final note, gold is no issue. If rerolling proffs, stacking my bags with elixirs etc is what will give me an edge then my bags will be full with months of supplies as fast as I can get them from the AH

Gearing mostly resolves about the block cap/unhitable today. Most ppl pick up the 4set with head as off piece on heroic. Mastery trinket from beth has a nice proc. If you overcap second choice is the stamina one. For buffs either mastery elix+stamina scroll/resist elix, or if you overcap stamina flask. Use mastery food and just gem mast untill cap then stamina.

You suggested regemming to make the mastery buff usefull. This goes for pretty much all buffs/gear. Basicly if you want more health, then take mastery over avoidance. The more mastery you have the more health you can gem/trinket/buff.

You suggested regemming to make the mastery buff usefull. This goes for pretty much all buffs/gear. Basicly if you want more health, then take mastery over avoidance. The more mastery you have the more health you can gem/trinket/buff.

This right here is the corner stone of our gearing. Get to 102.4% then start stacking stamina. You want to be able to take a couple of blocked punches and or a punch or two and a few boss dots (burning wounds, rag face punch a couple of times for example)without dying. It gives healers the room they need to get you back up, without panicking. I read somewhere that surviving simply means being healable. And the ability to take a couple punches to the face without dying makes you healable!

Profession wise, and this is my opinion. Drop tailoring and pick up jewelcrafting for BS/JC. I use to be an enchanter/JC until the guild wanted to make me guild blacksmith so I power leveled my blacksmithing. I'll say this: Having three epic jewelcrafting gems and two more sockets is just amazing. For prot and ret (I off spec ret for my guild. ) I feel it is great. If you have no qualms about dropping tailoring, I suggest you pick up JC and really max out your gear.

Our rotation isn't too hard to learn. It is very similar to the ret rotation but less RNGy (it is CS-Filler-CS-filler and so on. With your RNG being an auto crit Shield Slam (which you can pretty much just accept as cool and ignore.) and a reset to your Avenger's Shield. Which again you just stick to your rotation. ) So I think you will pick it up pretty quick if you practice it enough.

Yeah, when Souldrinker drops, you want it hands down. But the point is that Souldrinker drops from Madness of Deathwing, the last encounter in the expansion. For raids progressing though Demon Soul, there are no tank weapons, and you're stuck with strength dps weapons.

There doesn't seem to be one. We can use the mastery/crit axe or expertise/haste mace, but they're not really tanking weapons.

Bah... I should drink my coffee before replying...

Anyway, I still don't see the problem, the LFR version is already a good upgrade if you have a 378 weapon or lower, and if by any chance you happen to have a 391 shouldn't be too difficult to have a full normal clear to go for the 403 version. It's a good weapon, drops from the last boss, so what?

Zalaria wrote:Yeah, when Souldrinker drops, you want it hands down. But the point is that Souldrinker drops from Madness of Deathwing, the last encounter in the expansion. For raids progressing though Demon Soul, there are no tank weapons, and you're stuck with strength dps weapons.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I still am using the ol'cleaver and I have been raiding firelands since the week it came out. (Damn bad RNG) Though your DPS may get a little upset. We had a guy leave over that axe (I won the roll mind you.), and I and several other people had to explain to him how weapon damage helps me and how mastery is a tanking stat for me. He still rage quit.

Yeah, the Cleaver is a decent weapon. Hit is nice, even if it's unnecessary. My issue is the DS choices are crit/mastery and expertise/haste. Of the two, I'd choose the crit/mastery, but crit is useless for a tank. Oh well. Maybe that's their way to get tanks into LFR.

Crimsonheart wrote:yuck, Yeah the souldrinker should be attainable through LFR, im just used to my drop rates on equipment the last week of ICC i finally got my marrowgar mace...etc etc

I feel your pain, took me months to get my Last Laugh and before that in TBC I've spent ages with the Ogri'la shield without dropping anything better, by the time I changed Sunwell was out. I think everyone of us had some similar experience at some point

As far as I remember LFR can be run multiple times and you get loot locked only if you loot something, hence, if the sword is marked for tanks, which I guess will be as is the only one tank weapon available that I'm aware of, it's just a 50/50 roll if it drops, and if it doesn't just run it again.

degre wrote:As far as I remember LFR can be run multiple times and you get loot locked only if you loot something

Can anyone verify this from patch notes or the PTR? I realize it probably won't take long to figure that out once the patch hits, but it would be nice to know before I end up wasting my time running something that I'm loot locked for.

Yeah, they pretty much had to let you get multiple runs for drops because they don't expect random groups to succeed as often. It's the answer to the problem that made VoA groups refuse to kill more than the newest boss - even if people needed the loot, the chance that you'd fail on Emalon was high with pugs, and you'd not be able to get a new group to finish off if you were saved to one or two bosses.

KysenMurrin wrote:You get locked for loot the first time you kill a boss, you don't have to receive anything.

Ok, this isn't what I've understood then, this way makes no sense being able to run it multiple times if I'm loot locked.

There is another thing you can do -I tank on my warrior, you tank on your paladin all of the tanking loot goes to your paladin.I tank on my paladin, you tank on your paladin all the tanking loot goes to my paladin.

With two tanks signing up for two runs easy to grab some guildie healers to heal us reducing the chance of fail.

KysenMurrin wrote:You get locked for loot the first time you kill a boss, you don't have to receive anything.

Ok, this isn't what I've understood then, this way makes no sense being able to run it multiple times if I'm loot locked.

There is another thing you can do -I tank on my warrior, you tank on your paladin all of the tanking loot goes to your paladin.I tank on my paladin, you tank on your paladin all the tanking loot goes to my paladin.

With two tanks signing up for two runs easy to grab some guildie healers to heal us reducing the chance of fail.